Dantes Inferno Essay example -- Dante Inferno Essays

Dantes InfernoIt was sometime in the middle of the seventeenth century that British cleric Thomas Fuller wrote, He that go into sin is a homosexual that grieves at it, is a saint that boasteth of it, is a devil. If Fuller was right, where does one place Dante, the pilgrim who bravely wandered where no man had wandered earlier? Certainly, the sojourner precisely written by the poet of the same name was a man. Certainly, also, he repented his sinful ways (how could one not after braving not only if the depths of Hell scarcely later the stretches of Purgatory and the many waters of Heaven?), but he was no saint. Indeed, Inferno itself can be easily construed as a boast of sortsmade it through hell, met Lucifer, bought the t-shirt. But in reality, the adjudge is much more subtle, and the journey much more enlightening to readers as one watches Dante, an Everyman if ever there was one, change his thought processes even as foot passes foot on his journey downward. When examining just what type of man Dante the poet was, its classical to note the society of the times. To be from Italyor, even more specifically, from Florencewas an important distinction. Even today, Italy is a center of religion. In 1330, Italy was not only a Catholic Mecca but a republican haven. Dante the poet was not the only citizen of the city to gain distinctionMichelangelo, Raphael, and da Vinci all proudly added Florentine down the stairs their signatures. Additionally, Pope Gregory XI would find the city sinful enough to shut the entire place forty-six short years later. Living in such a tumultuous and dynamic atmosphere, it was no wonder that Dante the poet, already in exile, would place his literary counterpart (for clearly the pilgrim is ss otherwise specified... ...e go up of the pilgrim from a sinner, sympathetic even to those condemned by God, to that of a saint of sorts, vengeful and scornful of the enemies of the church. The presence of the two further episodes of Dante the poets Divine Comedy (Purgatorio and Paradiso) indicates that the pilgrims ghostly education is not complete, but he has learned a not bad(p) deal throughout his journey throughout hellarising from the subterranean with little honourable confusion and a greater sense of God-fearing reverence. For fourteenth century Italy, the alternative was more than a personality flawit was a stigma. The poet, alone and in exile, had taken truly to heart and to paper the speech communication that his Romantic counterpart Percy Shelley (a man who would be called to Italy himself time and time again) would make unnecessary nearly 500 years later The great instrument of moral good is the imagination.